Incoming: Modern Warfare 2 Stimulus Package DLC Hits PSN Tomorrow

First and foremost, the first downloadable content for Modern Warfare 2 — The Stimulus Package — will hit the PSN Store for $14.99 and bring with it five new maps to the multiplayer of MW2. Included in those five new maps are two classic Call of Duty 4 maps that we all know and love, and three completely new locations that offer a variety of unique locations for your favorite gametypes. The Stimulus Package includes:

Bailout – An American apartment complex that is amazing for objective gametypes, especially Capture the Flag, but one of those maps that works well regardless of what type of game you’re playing it on. Its long sightlines — like sniping from a blown-out wall of a second-story apartment suite — give it some nice spots for long-range sniping but also has plenty of flanking routes through the bullet-riddled gym, hallways, lobbies, and interconnecting units.

Salvage – A snowy junkyard covered in debris, crushed cars, and my favorite aspect — no place to hide (well, maybe one, but hiding in the dog house isn’t going to win you the game). This aspect of beautiful but simplistic design is what makes Salvage my new favorite map for Hardcore Team Deathmatch; it forces you to rely on your speed, accuracy, and skill. It’s all about offensive, sorry campers! This map is about getting in and STAYING in the fight.

Storm – A rainy warehouse district on the outskirts of a looming thunderstorm with booming lightning and rolling thunder. A massive interconnected warehouse with overhead walkways and plenty of machinery for cover makes this great for big team games. With plenty of surrounding outdoors areas for flanking or cutting through the connected buildings, this is a map that benefits from two teams working together to control their area and lock down domination points. This map has a great atmosphere and always results in some insane HQ games.

Crash – A war-torn urban environment with a crashed helicopter surrounded by several great vantage points. Whether you’re taking pop shots from the three-story building overlooking the map, or covering the center objective point from the second story of the appropriately named “blue room” windows, Crash is the first fan-favorite map to make a return from Call of Duty 4, and is one those multiplayer locations that is perfectly balanced regardless of the gametype you throw on it. Team Deathmatch is king on Crash for me personally and we’ve maintained every cover, sniper vantage, and perfect ‘nade spot you’ve grown to love, but have also filled the map out with even more detail.

Overgrown – A massive and open village divided down the center by a dried-up creekbed. Overgrown is a snipers paradise with its high grass, super-long sightlines, and earns its cred as one of our largest multiplayer maps. It’s back by popular demand from the community, and was one of my personal favorite maps of all time from Call of Duty 4. It’s been updated with some new lightning and atmospheric changes, yet maintains its trademark flow and appeal for big team games.

When you jump online to enjoy the new maps, you’re also going to be greeted with a few new additions to the playlists structure in multiplayer. You’ll notice two new playlists added to the bottom of the list: Stimulus & Stimulus Hardcore. These two playlists will allow you to play your favorite gametypes on ONLY the new maps. That way you get to experience them as much as you like.

Stimulus – This playlist will include all gametypes for 8-12 players and rotating through ONLY the new Stimulus Maps.

Stimulus Hardcore – This playlist will include Hardcore Ricochet Team Deathmatch, Hardcore Ricochet HQ Pro, Hardcore Ricochet Search and Destroy for 8-12 players and rotating through ONLY the new Stimulus Maps.

While these two playlists are reserved for those who download The Stimulus Package, the same day we’ll also be introducing an all new playlist for ALL Modern Warfare 2 players.

Team Tactical – 6-8 Players playing small team based games with Team Deathmatch, Domination, Capture the Flag, and Demolition. (First Person viewpoint)

This playlist is being added by HUGE demand from the community on our forums, Twitter, and other messages you’ve sent in to us; in addition to another requested change of adding the Ranger maps (Terminal, Skidrow, Highrise, Invasion) to the HC HQ Pro playlist.

When I said onslaught, I MEANT onslaught!

That’s not even all. When all these updates hit tomorrow on May 4th, we’ll also be flipping the Double XP switch for the first time, ON ALL PLAYLISTS, FOR ALL PLAYERS! So when you jump online you’ll be earning twice as many XP for your kills and objectives to help you finish off that Prestige you’ve been working on or, for all you level 70s, the deciding factor to take the leap into the next Prestige.

Tomorrow is all about adding even more mileage to your Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer, giving you all new locations to play, new playlists to play them on, and Double XP to make it all that much sweeter. I look forward to seeing all of you online!

You can follow official Modern Warfare 2 updates and news on Twitter by following @fourzerotwo.

Nice to hear from you Robert. I’m almost about the Prestige for the second time. I’m not really sure if I will again, the payoff is just not there. It would of been nice to get an extra custom slot at every Prestige. I don’t understand why people are so negative when it comes to this game. Truly the best FPS ever made, the sales numbers speak for themselves.

Actually, when you prestige, you do earn an extra Custom Class slot each time (up to 10 total custom create a class slots). So it’s a nice pay off if you’re someone who likes a lot of options or has a class per gametype or mode. I personally like to have a core and hardcore version for each class.

Wow, how is 15 bucks for five maps too much? That’s 3 dollars per map, figure in the number of times you are going to play on those maps and the price is miniscule. As an unemployed college student with a wife and child, you don’t have to tell me how tight money is nowadays, but come on people you have to take into consideration the amount of time you will use this product. Nothing wrong with being cheap, I’m the king of used games and hand-me-downs, but you have to acknowledge a good deal when you see one. And the two MW1 maps work out great for me, since I played the first one, but never owned it, so now I don’t have to go buy the entire game to enjoy them. Thanks IW.

lol notice how Bowling ONLY responded to non negitive comments. Way to stick up for your company and it’s decisions. Just remember a consumer will only allow themselves to get screwed over a certain number of times (yeah that’s unfortunate fact of life) before they say, hey we don’t have to support you! and go play some other games.

The Double XP starts with the update, so May 4th for NA and May 5th for everyone else. Even though Double XP will be enabled for ALL playlists, the playlist update happens with the title update / DLC, so it’s timed the same.

@ Mobius_124
1) HAHAHA You are right, I didn’t realize those pictures where from the other console! EPIC FAIL!!! They didn’t bother on using the ps3 for the captures. I’m guessing if I search the word lazy in the dictionary I will see the logo of Activision!!!
2) Right now you can have 4 games from Pixel Junk (they have an special package since Thursday). so for 15 bucks you can have: Eden, Monsters and Shooter.

The Pavelow killstreak glitch will be fixed in the title update you download tomorrow. In addition it will include the ability to kick players from your Private Match lobbies, prevent “elevator” exploits, make tweaks to One Man Army, have a fix for XP hacks (also working on a leaderboard cleansing), as well as some matchmaking updates.

The others you mentioned are not in the update tomorrow but are being looked into.

Well, in the month that 360 has had it, I’ve instead played MAG, BC2, and other games. And now with Lead and Gold coming out on Tuesday as well, guess which one I’m spending my $15 on?

I feel bad for fourzerotwo. He’s got the toughest job in the industry right now. Regardless of my feelings for his employer, I wish him well and hope everything works out no matter what he does in the future.

@Robert Bowling: Is there any way to fix the clearly-screwy hit physics?

Shots that clearly miss get one-shot kills.

Shoot someone in the back 10 times and they turn around and stab you from 20FT away.

Stabbing someone in the face and nothing happens – until they knife and get kill credit.

Getting knifed with the killer’s back to you.

…and other weird and more-than-annoying occurrences…

One more thing: Any way to get rid of Tactical Insertion? I love the idea but in FFA matches, too many dudes are running to corners to Tact Insert and let the other guy kill them to get nukes. I have to leave too many games where dudes are straight-up cheating.

Tomorrow title update, that will release before the DLC, includes some matchmaking updates that will help you find more games more suited for your personal connection which will hopefully reduce your occurrences which sound lag-related.

Thanks for comin to the Playstation Blog and updating us. You should stop by more often. IW has been having problems but you guys should start coming here more often
Will the new maps be playable in the 3rd person TeamTact.

Tomorrow the maps will have their own dedicated playlists (as outlined above), however once more people have downloaded them and there is a large community for both DLC and non-DLC players, we’ll add them to the rotation of ALL playlists (including 3rd person Team Tactical).

Hey Rob! Nice to see you on here! I was the one on your FB page b!@#$%n for a date for so long. Anyway, wondering when the double xp starts and ends. Also when can we expect the DLC to drop on PSN? And any news on the future DLC? Any clues you can give us? Thanks in advance! And look forward to finding out when you’ll be online on PS3 on the DLC. I’ll be looking for you!

Don’t you think it would have been a better fan service to release the 2 CoD4 maps for free, and then charge like $5 for 3 maps? That way, people wouldn’t think IW are the blood sucking, baby killing machines you appear to be.

Alternatively, if you weren’t an IW employee, would you honestly pay $15 for 3 new maps and 2 old maps?

As a gamer, of course I would loved if it was decided to do a free flashback pack for everyone and then the optional paid DLC with more maps. Kind of like we did with COD2 (first pack free, second paid).

However, to your other point, as a gamer who plays Modern Warfare 2 alot, I’d still buy the map pack. Simply because for me, I get a lot of extra playtime on these maps and it’s worth it to me for the amount of time I play on them.

Regardless of my personal feelings though, business is handled by the business end not my end at the developer.

After all the departures from IW, how much support can we expect for the game? I understand that there is another DLC coming but what about patches and fixes to the game on all three platforms? Will it be as consistent and as fast as it was in the past?

Yes – we continue to have a great team here at Infinity Ward (including the original MP designers that brought you MW2, and this map pack), so the same support structure is there and we plan to continue to update the game with more DLC and fixes as needed.

As I’ve said, tomorrow will introduce another title update that fixes a lot of things as well (like Pavelow killstreak counter, Ability to kick in private match, elevator exploit, XP hacks, etc).

Sorry but no. I’m not going to pay $15 for 3 NEW maps and 2 old ones. Be reasonable with prices for once. With that I could get a good PSN game or a used game at Gamestop. Or I could get reasonably priced dlc such as the ones for Uncharted 2 which for $12 I get 4 new maps, a new game mode, and extra characters. OR I could get maps for FREE since I bought Battlefield Bad Company 2 after MW2 so they give people who bought the game free content. I hope you see my point. I will wait until greediness is put aside when the maps are $10 at the most. While your at it maybe you can also fix disfunctional servers and connection/migrate host problems. But thank you for double XP. At least I don’t have to pay for that.